Posted by Dan Gunter on May 17, 1999 at 21:39:35:
In Reply to: My all-time favorite sentence in a JV book: posted by Jim Gust on May 11, 1999 at 07:16:42:
: In Emphyrio: "Bricks, bricks, bricks." Read it again, and when you get to that sentence, see how it conjures up such a feeling of pure tension. Only JV could convey so much with just 3 words.
Perhaps I should nominate my own brief appearance in a Vance novel: "Gunter? Gunter! Where the devil are you!" ("Araminta Station," p. 26.) That appeared about a year after I had sent Mr. Vance an appreciation letter. I long hoped that "Gunter" appeared because of my letter; I wasn't sure until I saw the recent letter from Vance to a fan in which Vance promised to put the fan's name in his new book. Now I'm sure!
More seriously: there are many beautiful sentences throughout Vance's work. I don't have it at hand, but the description of Ylin Ylan's suicide and the aftermath in "Servants of the Wankh" is both beautiful and powerful, although profoundly sad.
One of the strongest, though, appears in "Araminta Station" at p. 375. Kirdy Wook is speaking: "I can trust no one," he says. "This I now know. Of all the realities, it is most certain: the purest sweetest and only truth. I am I. All else is stink, slime and crawl space." That last sentence is not beautiful, but it is very strong.